July 25, 2025 • 59 mins
In this powerful episode of the Making Hope Happen radio show, Dr. Donita Grissom shares her remarkable journey from legal assistant to passionate educator and hope researcher. After experiencing profound personal tragedy, including the sudden loss of her husband while conducting doctoral research in Haiti, Grissom discovered the transformative power of hope. She discusses her groundbreaking work on hope theory, focusing on how educators can rebuild their passion and help students overcome challenges. Through her book "High Five to Thrive" and her work with Best Questers, Grissom provides practical strategies for teachers to reconnect with their purpose, manage burnout, and create supportive learning environments. Her insights reveal hope as a cognitive skill that can be learned, practiced, and used to drive personal and professional growth, offering a beacon of inspiration for educators and students alike.
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Episode Transcript
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Erin Brinker (00:00):
Erin, good morning, everyone. I'm Erin
(00:11):
Brinker, and this is the makinghope happen radio show. So glad
to have you with me on thisbeautiful summer day. And I
gotta tell you, I'm broadcastingfrom inland, Southern
California, the Inland Empire.
And we have had such agloriously mild summer. Last
summer, by this time, it was allover 100 degrees. And it's been
in the upper nine, upper 80s tomid 90s for the last month. And
(00:33):
it's been amazing. So I I alwaysstart out by saying what I'm
grateful for. I am grateful forthat. I am so grateful for that.
So got a great interview to usethe word great one more time.
I've got a great interview foryou today, and let's get
started. Do you ever have those?
(00:56):
Well, what I call God moments. Iknow this is not a faith based
show, but what I call Godmoments, and I'm having one of
those right now. My next guest,Danita Grissom, is a senior
lecturer at the University ofCentral Florida. She's the CEO
of best Questers LLC. She's aprofessional education
consultant and coach, certifiedload certified life coach and
(01:19):
motivational and keynotespeaker. She's also the author
of high five to thrive, Fiveproven practices to unleash your
passion for teaching. And ofcourse, you know what's more
important than the education ofour children? Danita Grissom,
welcome to the show.
Dr. Donita Grissom (01:36):
Thank you so much. I'm so honored and happy
to be here
Erin Brinker (01:40):
so so tell us about who you are and what led
you into the teachingprofession.
Dr. Donita Grissom (01:46):
Well, I've always been a kid magnet. I
guess you would say I lovechildren. I feel more
comfortable with children than Ido adults most of the time. Kids
are fun, and I love to have fun.
However, I'll just will add thisreally quick, teaching is my
second profession, legalassistant, paralegal. I ran law
(02:07):
firms for over 20 years, andthen I went back to teaching, or
went into teaching, I guess, forthe first time. So that is sort
of my, my history there, butsince then, I have taught K
through 12 ESOL students. I haveI taught music for one year, and
(02:28):
I have experience in all thegrade levels, but my predominant
teaching experience was at thehigh school level, and I fell in
love with them so but ESOL is mypassion. I love people from
other countries and cultures.
They feed my soul as I alwaystry to feed theirs. And during
(02:52):
that time, what I was findingwith my high school students is
that they all came to me withsome sort of trauma, and I was
concerned that we weren't ableto meet all of their needs,
their holistic, you know,teenage, personal needs in the
classroom. And a lot of themcame with a lot of baggage,
(03:18):
whether it be just leaving theircountry and leaving everything
they knew, including theirlanguage, leaving because of
some sort of war, which I had, alot of those students, lots of
different deep situations. Sofast forward, I began my
doctoral degree because I wantedto, I wanted to help them, and I
(03:41):
wanted to find ways to helpthem. So I was in a doctoral
program. And two years into thedoctoral program, I was in Haiti
doing some research for mydissertation, and I left on a
Sunday, and my husband had gonewith me, and on Friday morning,
(04:03):
I get a call that no one everwants to get, and that call was
that he had had an aconstruction accident, and he
was gone. Oh my gosh. So that
Erin Brinker (04:16):
became, that's horrible. I'm so sorry. Let me
sit with that for a second.
That's okay, okay, that's that'sincredibly traumatic. I think
the only thing worse would belosing a child. It would be
Dr. Donita Grissom (04:28):
but it was in that moment. I mean, I was
like, No, you know, you can'timagine. I just talked to him at
830 last night. How could thisbe? Everything in my world came
crashing down. And theinteresting thing was that I was
working with people whoobviously one year from the
earthquake, and I was doingresearch surrounding some of
(04:52):
that and interviewing people.
But when I finished. Just thatthose interviews, and when this
happened, I realized, you know,I can't transcribe those tapes
because my husband's voice wasin all of those, oh yeah. And so
every, every goal that I had,every thing that I had hoped to
(05:17):
do was no more. It died withhim, basically, and I just
didn't know what to do withmyself. I didn't I couldn't pick
myself. I was paralyzed for thatmoment. I was hopeless. Okay?
So, oddly enough, my cognate Ihad chose was social work
(05:37):
counseling, because that wasgoing to help me develop,
whatever it was I was going todevelop to help you know, these,
these people who are, areimmigrants and Esau students.
Erin Brinker (05:51):
That was an ESOL is English as a second language,
correct, English as a secondlanguage.
Dr. Donita Grissom (05:55):
Yes, that that's the field that I that my
PhD is in, and my master'sdegree and the whole thing. So
so as the story goes, I woke upone morning, I was in the
shower, didn't know what I wasgoing to do. And I know you
talked about faith at the verybeginning of the story. This is
(06:18):
my faith part. I felt thebiggest hug on the inside of me,
that's the only way I know howto describe it, and I felt this
nudging that I had to get backto my doctoral work, and I had
to finish this thing that I wassupposed to do, even though I
didn't know what that thing was.
So I went back to school, and mysocial work professor called me
(06:39):
in one day and began talking tome about, you know, what are you
going to do about your study?
And I said, I can't do what Iwas doing. It was about
education, but it was somethingtotally different, and I won't
go into that. That's anotherday, another story. But I told
her my past, which I kind oftold you the Reader's Digest
(07:01):
version earlier, and I said, I'minterested in the trauma, and I
was measuring some things inHaiti with, you know, illiterate
Haitian people there, and Ididn't want to lose them,
because it took too long todevelop that relationship. When
you do research in a third worldcountry, it's not easy. And so
she said, Well, you're too farremoved to study trauma, but you
(07:25):
can study hope. Ah, I had noidea what she was talking about,
but I literally burst intotears, because in my prayer
time, I'm not an artist, but Ihave been drawing these little
hope chests, and didn't evenknow why. So it really resonated
in my whole body, you know,spirit, soul and body. So that's
(07:45):
what I did. I began reading andstudying every single thing I
could get my hands on abouthope. And I did do my
dissertation about hope. Imeasured hope levels of
illiterate and people in Haiti,and it was a very interesting
study and and maybe another daywe'll talk about that. The
results of that, however, I justwant to throw this in really
(08:09):
quick. What I found out is thatanybody can have hope. It's
related to our cultural nuances,our cultural differences also.
So, for example, the Haitianpeople, their goals are not the
same as Western goals. So theywere able to find strategies to
(08:31):
meet some of their goals inlife. And it touched me so much
to be able to work with thesepeople and do that. But fast
forward. A little bit. When Iwas doing my dissertation, I ran
into some snags. You can imaginedoing research in a third world
country, indeed, yes. So I hadsome big snags. I had that
(08:53):
moment one day when I ran out, Iwas I was out at the beach, and
I ran out to the beach, and Iwas screaming like, you know, I
don't know what to do. I'mhaving this brick wall moment
and and it's like, am I going tohave to throw all this in the
trash can or what? So I didn'tobviously have to throw it in
the trash can. But what happenedwas my mama, who's no longer
(09:16):
with us, my little mama, shecalled me up a couple days
later, honey. I don't know ifthis will mean anything to you
or not, but I read this today inthe newspaper. This man just
wrote a new book called makinghope happen by Doctor Shane
Lopez. And so I'm like, Mom, Idon't know, but I'm going to
(09:38):
find out. I went and got thebook immediately. I read the
book, and it literally filled,filled my heart with such hope.
Erin Brinker (09:46):
I bet it did.
Dr. Donita Grissom (09:48):
I contacted him, and he answered me, which
was phenomenal, because a lot ofpeople you know in his position
might not have but he did. And.
And I have to tell you that DrLopez was because he's no longer
with us, unfortunately, and I'mso sad about that. The most
incredibly kind person, hopefuldown to earth. He was amazing.
(10:15):
He he agreed to be on mydissertation committee. Oh, wow,
yes, he helped me so much. Andwhat I didn't know was that,
unfortunately, he was not doingwell then. But I didn't know,
didn't know that he that wasthere for me. We got through the
snags. He helped me so muchbecause, you know, he was a
(10:38):
senior Gallup Poll researcher,as well as all of the other
things that he did. And so Ialways say, hope found me, you
know, and his His work becamefoundational to me and in my
personal life and in myprofessional life. So moving
(11:01):
forward, we lost him too early,and now I feel that one of his
many batons was passed to me.
And so I've continued writing,researching, reading, talking
about hope, everywhere I go toall people. Right now, I'm
(11:23):
focusing on teachers, becausethat is the profession that I am
in now. But I have been in thebusiness world. So look out,
business world. I'm coming foryou later down the road.
Erin Brinker (11:33):
They need it. Boy, they need it. And I think it's
important, like to kind of closethe loop that I opened, saying
that, you know that this is aGod moment, the making hope
happen. Foundation is thefoundation where I work in this
namesake for this podcast andradio show, and the the work
that it supports the SanBernardino City Unified School
(11:54):
District, and which also has aconnection to Shane Lopez as our
former superintendent, Dr DaleMarsden became, you know, became
you know, became thesuperintendent in San
Bernardino. He he wanted toinject hope into the work,
because it felt very hopeless inthe district. People were
resigned to just let people, letthe kids fail, like, you know,
(12:17):
that they just well, those kidscan't perform, you know, let's
just they are who they are andwhatever. And which is horrible,
which is absolutely horrible,but that kind of malaise had had
was a wet blanket over thedistrict, and Dale Marson came
in and said, Nope, we're notgoing to do this. And he turned
the district around and and thegraduation rate here went from
(12:38):
65% to about 90% and engagedfamilies. Had huge town hall
meetings with residents andemployees. You know, teachers,
both and so classified andcertificated staff and all of
the all the different parties.
And he did that throughout histenure, and really changed the
motto of the district to makinghope happen with permission from
(12:58):
Dr Lopez and the foundation thenwas launched to help support
that mission. And it reallycomes down to hope is the
driving force for positiveoutcomes, how you see yourself,
and how you see how you fit inthe world and what's possible
changes everything.
Dr. Donita Grissom (13:20):
You're absolutely 100% correct, and I
would love to come to yourschool district, because
everything that you're doing andyour foundation and what's
happening in the San Bernardinoschool districts, that's the
mission for best Questers.
That's what we do and what we'redoing, and what we're wanting to
do nationally andinternationally, because our
(13:42):
work does go from across theborders.
Erin Brinker (13:47):
Yes. So, so tell me about I'm really interested
in the work that you did in inHaiti, and kind of how you how
you then wrapped up your yourresearch, and what you learned,
and has anything come of that?
Dr. Donita Grissom (14:01):
So what became of that is that,
obviously I've written someacademic journal articles
because I am, you know, a fulltime faculty member, and this
that what I've found hasinformed the whole field. Okay?
(14:23):
Because a lot of people, theylook at third world countries
and they think, for example, whyare they sitting on the side of
the road while there's just halfmade buildings? Why aren't they
doing something? And what Ilearned was, first of all the
NGOs, they use the money thatthey got to help Haiti, but they
(14:47):
ran out of money. And one of thebig key takeaways was, you know,
you, you know the saying youcan, you can train a person to
see, what is it they to fish? Ifyou don't treat them to fish,
they can't catch their cells,right?
Erin Brinker (15:02):
You give them a fish they eat for a day. Yeah?
You teach them how to fish,they'll eat. That's
Dr. Donita Grissom (15:07):
it. Thank you. Thank you. Sure. So that's
what was happening, and what Ilearned through all my research
was that they wanted to dosomething, but they didn't know
how, so they they wereparalyzed. And what we call, we
call that hopeless. And so whatI tell people is, and what, what
(15:28):
I've learned through thatdesperate situation was, no
matter what situation you findyourself in, hope, research says
you don't have to stay there.
Things can change, but hoperequires making a choice, right?
And so it does, yeah. And so ifyou don't mind, can I just kind
(15:53):
of go into what hope it reallyis? Yeah, please, please do.
Because what we also learned isthat most people don't really
know what hope is. What are wetalking about? So Dr kelchner,
who's one of my partners, Vickykelchner and I, we did a study
several years ago because wewere working with teachers, and
we were wanting to help teachershelp, you know, raise the level
(16:14):
of hope in their children in theclassroom, because Dr Lopez and
others that worked with him havedone so much research on the
benefits of children having highhope and in the classroom. So we
were, we were working withteachers in that regard, and
what we found out is, whoa, wegotta back up and punt because
they don't really know what itis and how to how to raise those
(16:38):
levels, because they don'treally know what it is. So we
did a whole study and and thatarticle, by the way, has been
one of the most cited articlesin in the field regarding those
regarding those topics. So Iknow you asked me about how it
relates to Haiti, but Haiti ismy my my big personal
(16:59):
visualization when I think ofhopelessness, because at that
time, they were feelinghopelessness regarding a lot of
their situations. But then, butthen once, I started learning
what hope is, which I am fixingto share what it really is, I
began seeing how we could helpthem with strategies and
(17:21):
strategies, how to make theirparticular goals come to life.
So what is hope? A lot of peoplethink it's just wishful
thinking, you know, like, I wishI had a million dollars. I wish
that I could go to Hawaii, youknow, things that they dream
about. And there's nothing wrongwith that, but for actual hope
to be in existence, you havegoals or problems. So I usually
(17:44):
ask everybody, is there anypeople in this room who don't
have any problems? Of course, itdoesn't exist. You don't exist,
right? You're not real. Do youhave goals? So the way I like to
frame that is that problems canbecome goals with possibilities.
Okay, so we look at goals andproblems, and I kind of wrap
(18:08):
those into the same bucket.
Let's turn that into a goal.
Let's turn that problem into agoal. And education is a perfect
place, because we work withgoals every day, with our
students. But anyway,nevertheless, that the next
component is you have astrategy. That's the pathway,
that's how, how are we going todo this thing? And then we have
(18:29):
the agency factor. And theagency factor is that place
where we get the gas in our tankto keep moving from point A to
point B. It includes motivation.
It includes the mindset. That'sthe place where I work a lot,
(18:50):
because neuroscience will tellyou that your thoughts become
your actions. And so in orderfor you to get from one place to
another, if your thoughts aren'tlined up in a way, we call it
hot hot, hot thinking. Hopeoperational thinking that we've
coined that little phrase hotthinking. If you don't have
(19:13):
that, then you're going to bedetained and hindered, because
you're not going to have thecourage to take that next
pathway step. So those threeingredients must be in operation
for there be true hope tohappen. So we work, we dissect
those three components, and wework on those we work on goal
setting. We work on how to makethose goals where they're
(19:39):
smaller. We call them smallbiggies, you know, because all
three of them work together,they weave together constantly.
It's not like, Okay, we're goingto work on this, and now then
we're going to work on ourthoughts, and now we're going to
work on our motivation. Itdoesn't work that way. It's all
working together at the sametime, simultaneously, and a big
(19:59):
factor. Is celebrating too. Sowhen you make you realize that
small Biggie, you celebrate someway. And you know, we don't do
that enough.
Erin Brinker (20:07):
We don't, we don't celebrate the small wins at all.
Dr. Donita Grissom (20:11):
And that is really like stopping at the gas
station and putting more gas inthe tank. Oh, wow, I did that. I
can do that again. Okay, youknow, it may be something a
little different, but it's like,you know, I've never done this
before, but I'm going to trythis strategy now. There's
another notion, and it's not acomponent of Doctor Snyder's
(20:35):
hope theory, which Dr Snyder wasthe theorist who developed this
theory that Dr Lopez, and manyof us work on but he does talk
about it, and we call it thehope agent, the connector, that
person who's been there and donethat, who's going to work and
walk with me, because there's awhole strand of incredible
(20:56):
research about the benefits ofnot walking alone, and what
happens when we are inisolation. I mean, think of
covid for goodness sakes. Lookwhat all happened to us. You
know, we got we got depressed,we did and gained 25 pounds or
more, and some people becamealcoholics, and, yeah, many,
many other things. So with thatbeing said, we're not making a
(21:22):
theory or a component out of it,but we we preach it, we talk
about it, we include it, becauseI think it's really most
important. You know, togetherwe're better. That's one of our
things that we say all of thetime. And let me tell you why,
because the theory does say thatthere's some people when you
(21:44):
measure hope, and by the way, wedo measure hope, we can measure
hope with instruments developedand researched highly by Dr
Snyder. And by the way, histheory is the most researched
and most written about theory inthe field of positive
psychology. So let me just putthat in out there anyway. With
if you measure hope and youlook, some people are stronger.
(22:08):
They may have a stronger levelof pathway thinking where they
know, hey, I have ideas. I justdon't have the motivation or the
mindset to carry them out. Andthat's when you need someone to
help you with your motivationand your mindset and your your I
can do thinking kind of thing.
And what we're
Erin Brinker (22:29):
talking about is not toxic positivity, because
there's a lot of conversationsbeing had about people who are
are positive to the point ofbeing toxic, where they're not
looking at reality at all. Andthat's This is very different
from that, very
Dr. Donita Grissom (22:43):
different.
And I'm really glad you broughtthat up as matter of fact, I
just wrote something about thatyesterday. So so let me just
give you an illustration. So oneday we were driving down the
road, and, you know, you get tothis mountain, and it's like,
well, I the map is telling theGPS is telling me to go
straight, but if I go straight,I'm going to we're going to run
right into that mountain. Okay,many times in our goals, we run
(23:06):
up upon obstacles. Okay, well,toxic positivity is to pretend
basically that that mountain andthat obstacle is not there, and,
oh, that doesn't matter. We'regoing to get through it. We had
that ability. We can doeverything's okay, just get over
it, whatever, whatever,whatever. And that's not true.
Or, you know, it could besomeone sick, but that positive
(23:30):
psycho, or, excuse me, toxicpsychology would say, Oh, I feel
great when you have 103temperature. That's toxic. What
is positive, and what we call,you know, gives you hopefulness,
is when you take your you'regoing to have obstacles.
Sometimes, believe me, itdoesn't matter if we come
(23:53):
together with the best hopeaction plan, where we really
talk about our goals and wereally get our pathways, and we
really get our thinking straightand our motivation, we have our
hope agents. We're going to haveobstacles. Any person out there
who is a motivational speaker,you know, self help person, and
they tell you we have all theanswers. Run from them as fast
(24:14):
as you can, because no one does,because noone does. And what I
say is, if you want change, ifyou want these things to happen,
and you do nothing, you will getnothing. But if you do
something, something willhappen. And so we, we help with
that. That's why we, we put fiveproven strategies and practices
in our book, not 10, becausepeople can't handle all that the
(24:36):
same time. We're we'rerealistic, right? Yes, so let's
go back. I'm glad you said thetoxic stuff, so we got that out
of the way. No, this iscognitive. Hope. Is very much a
cognitive psychologicalconstruct. It's how God made us
as humans. We all have, whetheryou believe in God or not.
(24:58):
That's just the way we're madeup. And hope can be learned. It
can be taught. It can grow. Itcan diminish at times, as you
know, I told you my story, mypersonal life, earthquake story,
you know, at that point in time,I was hopeless. I wasn't a
hopeless person in in general,I'm pretty hopeful person, but
(25:22):
at that time, so there's two,there's two different kinds of
hope, but that's a whole that'sa little bit deeper topic. So
let's go, let's go back to thethings that we can do. So if do
you have any questions so far?
Erin Brinker (25:39):
Well, I, first of all, I'm riveted. This is, this
is really wonderful. And I havethings, you know, it really
seems to me that hope is thedifference between life
happening to you and youhappening to life. Oh my gosh. I
love that. Everything, everybodyhas those horrible things. I
mean, in Haiti, we'll use Haitias the example. You know,
(25:59):
earthquakes, famines, corruptgovernment, you know, all the
things that they deal with on aregular basis, and if and if,
hope can be instilled there.
What a difference that couldmake. Because it is a mindset
shift that, again, you're not avictim, you are a how do you go
from victimhood to survivor. Anda survivor is a powerful
(26:21):
position. Victim is a powerlessposition.
Dr. Donita Grissom (26:27):
And I love how you said that. And then I
take that a little bit stepfurther. Is that each person who
becomes a victor. Now you go,help somebody else. Be one
indeed. You go be that hope,agent and and we, you know, I
was just working in the schools.
I think about, well, teachers.
And this is, let me just kind oftell you why we decided to stop
(26:51):
and write this book. Because myfield is in, you know, English
for Speakers of Other Languages.
And I've traveled the worldtraining teachers how to do
that. That's, you know, and I dothat at the university, but
because I've always beeninterested in the person and the
people, actually, we'll justwhisper this actually more than
how to teach them English, butEnglish is a great tool, and
(27:11):
they need that. But I'm dealingwith people, and so that's why I
became a life coach. And youknow, I'm so interested in hope
theory, because it, it's sohigher people with higher hope
levels. They're happier people.
They stay at their jobs longer.
They're able to strategize andwork themselves out of those big
problems better. They're able togive, give that hope, and
(27:34):
they're able to set more goals,realize more goals that at
school. A few little facts aboutthat. Children with higher hope
levels, they have been proven tomake a grade whole grade level
higher than the lower hopestudents. Wow, that that's right
(27:54):
there. That's all I have to say.
When I go talk to teachers,their ears perk up. What?
Because, you know those teacherevaluations are important, so
student achievement andoutcomes, that's important,
right? And there's lessdiscipline problems when you
have children with higher hope.
And so there's many, many morebenefits, but those are some
(28:18):
really great benefits rightthere to start out with. So I
was thinking, as I was going outand training teachers, teachers
would say to me, I know you havegreat strategies for for
teaching in the classroom, butplease don't teach us anymore,
because we'll have to beresponsible for and we're
responsible for so much rightnow. Yep, they have such
(28:40):
fatigue, and I'm so overwhelmed.
Yeah, that,
Erin Brinker (28:45):
and I have to speak to that really quickly,
yes, not to interrupt. But no,they are. They are. Education is
a bright, shiny object, meaning,meaning that everybody pays
attention to it, and everybodythinks they know how to do it
because they were students. Andnew, this is terrible new
fangled ideas, or, you know,crazy new theories, or just new
(29:08):
theories are dumped on them allthe time. So they're trying to
manage their classroom. They'veall these different
personalities, kids coming toschool hungry, not cared for,
you know, all the things trauma,all the things that kids come to
school with, and maybe they'renot ready to learn, and teachers
have to do to manage all ofthat, and then, plus learn
(29:29):
whatever new fangled thing isbeing laid on top of it, they
are overwhelmed andunderappreciated and burned out
Dr. Donita Grissom (29:38):
absolutely and those children that come to
school that way, research tellsus that when these children are
greeted with teachers who areemotionally healthy, they show
(29:58):
up in the classroom. Uh, they'remindful in the moment, and they
create these atmospheres wherethe effective filter is low.
What I mean by that is they havea trusting, caring, safe
environment for those students,and whenever they feed into
(30:20):
those needs of their students.
Students are going to learnbetter. Their outcomes will be
better. However, when thatteacher is stressed, burned out,
overworked, fatigued, thechildren feel that stress. And
there's a part in the back ofthe brain. And I can't say the
(30:40):
word very good, but anyway, itstarts with an A, and it shuts
off. That's
Erin Brinker (30:46):
the amygdala.
Thank you. That one
Dr. Donita Grissom (30:50):
hard time with that word. My southern
English just doesn't want to saythat word, right? And but it
shuts off. And it's like thatmountain. There's nothing going
in, baby, yep, and they'rescared and they're and that
they're going to act out, orthey're going to zone out, and
teachers are going to get mad atthem or upset with them. Why
(31:13):
aren't you paying attention? Orwhatever they do. Now, not all
teachers do that. Okay, I'm notsaying everyone does that, but
that's part of the big problem.
And so they all want the samething. They want the student
outcomes, but we've got to backup and punt again. What are we
going to do for the teacher? Andthat's why high five to thrive
was born, because my partnersand I stopped and it's like,
(31:37):
whoa. We have got to dosomething to help teachers,
because in helping the teachersto develop, you know, we can't,
we can't erase. I want to take abig eraser, and I want to erase
all the low salaries, and I wantto erase all the leadership
issues that, that, you know,that we have. And by the way,
principals and superintendentsand the staff and counselors,
(32:00):
they're all overworked andunderpaid and overwhelmed too.
Okay, so nobody this. This is inthe whole entire field of
education right now, even peopleare university level. Let me
just say there's so muchhappening in the world right now
in education. Education is beingshut shake
Erin Brinker (32:19):
it to the core. It is, it is. It absolutely is yes.
So this
Dr. Donita Grissom (32:23):
is why we wrote this book. Because we want
to help educators to thrive, sotheir students can thrive. We
all want the same things. Butguess what? Professional
development doesn't always valueprofessional development,
regarding teacher wellness andself care, because they want
(32:47):
that new fangled idea out there,but that new fangled ideal is
not even going to last with theteacher because they're too
overwhelmed. So you know, how dowe get school districts to
realize that we gotta take careof our educators, no matter if
(33:07):
they're superintendent,principals, para professionals,
teachers, counselors, whoever.
And so we came up with theseideas, and we wrote this book
with stories from the field andour proven practices, we tried
to make the book fun as well,because we, you know, and
engaging not too long. But it'spowerful, and we're seeing
(33:30):
teachers be able to regain theirenergy and their joy. And one of
the things, the first thing inour book, actually, is an
exercise to reconnect to theirwhy? Why did I want to become a
teacher? Because those we callit the dream not so true days,
(33:52):
and those dream not so true dayswhen your your class is falling
apart, you know, they'rethrowing spit balls at each
other, or whatever you'rehaving. One of those days you
can forget, why did I want tobecome a teacher? But see
teaching to us is a calling, andif you have that heart of a
teacher, you're always going tobe a teacher. But it's powerful
(34:14):
to reconnect to your why itsounds simple. And guess what?
Most of these strategies aresimple, but as I talked about
hope earlier, it always requiresa choice, and then it becomes
required to make it a habit. Andwe teach you how to do that in
the book and in our workshops.
(34:35):
By the way we work on how do wemake this a habit? And then,
obviously, I have two chaptersin the book devoted completely
to every, you know, all theaspects of hope and and how
we're going to do that. And thenwe have a chapter regarding the
connections. And it's, it's veryit's very powerful. And then we
have the mind body connection.
Because, see, we, you know, wealways forget about that,
(34:56):
because people think that's
Erin Brinker (34:58):
kind of, woo, woo.
You. If you have trauma, thebody remembers, and that's
physiological. It's not, it'snot airy fairy or whatever it
is. It you your mind may beputting it aside, but your body
remembers, and so it'll manifestitself in aches and pains. It'll
manifest itself in a chroniccold, or, you know, whatever,
because it suppresses immunesystem, headaches, all of that.
Yeah,
Dr. Donita Grissom (35:21):
yes, anxiety attacks, panic attacks, all of
those things.
Erin Brinker (35:25):
But you really talking about that? The
challenge in a school is it's ateacher can certainly create an
oasis in his or her classroom,but it's it's challenging
because the school itself has aculture, and a district itself
has a culture. So if you don'thave buy in on a school level or
a district level, it becomesmore difficult to create that,
(35:47):
that space in your ownclassroom, because you're
impacted by, you know, a childgoes, say, middle school kid, he
goes from classroom to classroomevery 55 minutes. And, you know,
once one the culture in oneclass could be vastly different
from another, and he's wound upfrom one class, and he's not
going to come into your classand be calm. And so, you know,
how do you, how do you changethe culture and organization in
(36:08):
an organization, a whole schoolor a whole district, so that you
that you have a better alignedor a better working system?
Well, that's, I know, that's abig question.
Dr. Donita Grissom (36:18):
That's a big question. And actually last
week, I was in Nashville at theinnovative school Summit, where
there were 3000 educators fromaround the United States and
like minded people talking aboutall these things that we're
talking about today and more.
And we have to get the messageout there. So one of the things
(36:39):
that we're doing today here onthis podcast, hopefully we're
getting that message out there.
You want you want change, thenyou are right. We have to
address this. You talk aboutteacher retention. We have to
address these things, but for itto be a more transformative
change, you're right, it needsto happen from the top. I hate
(37:03):
to say top down, like down isbetter or worse. I'm not putting
a quantifier on it, but I'mtalking about all the people
involved, even the parents,okay, especially parents. And
that will getting that wholecommunity together, like you did
in San Bernardino, and workingwith all of the stakeholders in
education, and then take it thateven step further of well, let's
(37:27):
how so now we're that we'redoing this. How are we going to
work with the children on this?
And how are we going to haveaccountability? You know, you
can pick up this book, butwithout having this follow
through, some people will, willput those practices into into
play, but others will not,because they really need those
connections, which we, you know,we help provide, and I'm
(37:48):
teaching them how so our wholenotion is what you just said. We
want to be able to work witheveryone and provide a place for
them to do that.
Erin Brinker (38:01):
You know it's business school 101, that you
cannot expect your employees totreat your customers any better
than you treat those employees.
Oh, that's beautiful and, andit's true, right? So if you have
a toxic work environment, yourcustomers aren't going to have a
joyful experience in your storeor whatever. And the same thing.
And I would say even more soexists in education. It's
(38:22):
absolutely, there's, you don'tsell widgets, there's, it's a
people business, and creatingthat, that environment that has
both accountability and support,because you need both, is
critical to that beingsuccessful. And it's, it's,
it's, it's simple, but it's noteasy,
Dr. Donita Grissom (38:43):
and it goes back to a choice. It it's a
choice and it's a habit. Youknow, when we when we think
about what we call flip thescript, those mindset changes,
and we call it hope hackingthoughts. And we want those
thoughts to be flipped intohopeful thoughts that give us
that, the thoughts to makeactions that are going to get us
(39:06):
where we're closer to where wewant to go. So I wanted, oh,
sorry, please forgive me. That'sokay. And Dr Carolyn Leith,
she's a neuroscientist. She hasa lot of books out there, and
I've read every one of them. Ilove her work, and she'll tell
you that it takes about 62 daysfor you to notice a hope. We
(39:28):
call it, like I said, a hopehacking. Thought, I don't like
to call it negative or positive,but I know that that's what they
use in positive psychology. Butfor me, I like to just say hope
hacking, and to to we call catchit in the in our book, we call
it catch it. You have to noticeit. See, sometimes we don't even
notice that, that we have thosethoughts that come, and you have
(39:52):
to notice what they are and andwe talk about that in our book.
But then you have to catch it,and then you have to release it.
You can't. 10 that it wasn'tthere, and some of those
thoughts you have to grieve themand leave them, grieve it and
leave it okay. You knowknowledge that it's there, but
don't internalize it likethere's something bad wrong with
(40:13):
you, because that's not true.
And no it can be fixed. So onceyou recognize it and you catch
it, you release it. Now we startreplacing it. Well, when I first
started doing that in my ownpersonal life, I had no idea
what to replace them with,right? So we, we have a whole
section in our book, not forevery single, you know, whole
packing thought there is in theworld, but to give a lot of
(40:36):
illustration of where to start,you know, where do we start
doing this. And so you can writethem down, put them on sticky
notes. You know, different,different tactics we have in the
book of how to do that, butafter you practice that. So for
example, you know, you want to,you want to lose five pounds,
and you think, I'll never dothis. You know, I I'd love
donuts, and I whatever. I'llnever do this. But then I catch
(40:58):
myself saying, I'll never do itto the next step. I might say,
well, I'm going to try, youknow, and I'm going to tell my
daughter, hey, when you nexttime you hear me say, I you
know, I'm no good at this. Ican't do it. Remind me, Hey,
Mom, you said you were trying.
Oh, that's right, I'm trying. SoI got my help agent to help me
get this momentum going. Andwhat happens in your brain. We
(41:23):
call it neuroplasticity. That'sthe big scientific word. But
your your brain can change withmaking those changes, those
pivots, with those flipping thescript thoughts, and in two
months, if you're really payingattention, then all of a sudden,
one day, it's just going to bean automatic that whole packing
(41:46):
thought will not be yourautomatic go to when you're when
you're looking at donuts. So,and I can attest to that my own
life, that I can't tell you thatevery single thing's changed. I
have to work on this all thetime, right?
Erin Brinker (42:06):
It's an ongoing thing. You know, this is not a
mastery thing. This is anongoing I'm continuing to learn
kind of thing that is
Dr. Donita Grissom (42:13):
so true, and we have to remind each other.
You know, my business partnerthis morning was reminding me of
some some thought patterns, youknow, in her own life. And I'm
like, You know what? It's sotrue, we have to reread our
books cuz we're forgetting, youknow. And so I don't want anyone
to think that, you know, put thebook down before they even
(42:38):
start, because they think, Oh, Ican't do this. No, that is not.
This book is written from theperspective of, hey, we've been
there and we've done this, andwe're still doing this, but
let's help each other. Let's,let's get together,
Erin Brinker (42:51):
hope. And I love that. And I am thinking about,
you know, back to the teacher,talking about teachers, there's
a lot of fear in classroomsright now, part of it is because
of cell phones, because anybodycould take a random clip and
then, you know, take it out ofcontext and blow it up, and you
know, your career is at stake.
And what's happening is teachersare afraid to break up fights.
(43:13):
They're afraid to get in themiddle of confrontations,
because they're afraid thatsomething will end up on Tiktok
that will end their career. Andpeople say, Well, if they're not
doing anything wrong, so if youdon't understand, the most
innocuous thing can be blown upinto well, they should have
known this, or they should haveknown that, and they're
inadequate, inadequatelytrained. Did you at this
conference that you went to inNashville, or in your other
(43:35):
work? Have you all talked aboutthat level of fear?
Dr. Donita Grissom (43:40):
I was not at any workshops, unfortunately,
that talked about that. However,I I do know that there was a lot
of talk about fear, but fromdifferent angles. And there were
some, some workshops there aboutguns in the school, keeping
children safe. You know, I couldgo down the list of things.
(44:02):
There were workshops there, butI wasn't in those. So I'm sorry
I can't. No, that's okay, and Ineed to add, but I will say one
thing about that. First of all,is the awareness. Second of all,
is learning how to talk aboutdifficult subjects. And number
three, is putting the peopletogether to to come up with a
(44:23):
plan together and and that's ahope action plan. We have this
problem, right? Indeed, yes. So,so you can't just ignore it.
You've got and you've got to dosomething about it. So put your
teams together. And there was alot of talk about folks
connecting and collaboratingteams, starting from the top
down, put all the peopletogether and then put it into
(44:47):
practice. It so for whateverthat, whatever it is,
Erin Brinker (44:51):
and I, I think that's important, you know it. I
think the biggest thing is thatpeople, they feel alone. And
like you said, that this, thiswork. Not possible in a vacuum,
right? You have to do itconnecting with the people
around you, because they becomenot only your accountability
partners, because that has anegative connotation, but your
but your cheerleader, yoursupport, your your hope partner.
Dr. Donita Grissom (45:15):
It becomes, well, let me just tell you a
little bit of the research aboutconnectivity with people you
know, you know the saying thatour bodies have happy
endorphins, they do and andhappy juice, I guess you can
call it. And when you're in afruitful, thriving relationship
(45:36):
with anyone, your body is givingyou that happy juice, and so
when you get that happy juice,then you're more let's more
inclined to look at things withmore of those hopeful ideas.
(45:57):
Doesn't mean that the realobstacles are there, but those
obstacles are there, and we'retrying to work out solutions.
But if, versus if, you're inisolation and you're not
connecting, you're not havinghappy juices and you're doing
nothing, then, as I saidearlier, that's hopelessness and
you're paralyzed and nothing'sgoing to happen. So it's a
(46:18):
choice. Some people don't liketo be involved with other
people, and that's a fear, orwhatever it may be. It might
just be their preference. Maybethey don't even know that they
need other people. Maybe they'rejust, you know, I've known some
people that think I can doeverything by myself, but guess
what? You can't, right? I mean,you can, you can, but, but
(46:39):
you're gonna think about pickingup a heavy object. You're just
gonna pick it up and get itfurther if you have help you
Erin Brinker (46:47):
do and your circle doesn't have to be 1000 people.
It could be five.
Dr. Donita Grissom (46:51):
It can be two sometimes, you know, I mean,
whatever it takes. And, youknow, relationships are funny
things. I mean, that's a wholeother thing of how to operate in
good relationships and in goodcollaborations. That's a whole
nother field of study. But youhave to start somewhere, because
(47:11):
right now there's so many thingsflying around and happening with
loss of funding, you know, withteachers leaving the field, with
new standards, with people notbeing sure of what they are
supposed to do, with having newthings in this school, but only
one or two people are doingthem, not everybody, and so on.
(47:34):
All the different things. All ofthose can't be solved overnight.
But leaders, we need you to getyour healing so you can pull
your team together.
Erin Brinker (47:46):
You know, yes, you can't pour from an empty cup.
Dr. Donita Grissom (47:49):
That's it.
And we, and I call hope is thatgift that keeps on giving. You
know, when you're doing thesethings, and you include all of
different ingredients of hope,and those help levels rise,
because they will. And youcelebrate the successes, you
know. You don't just complainabout it, you do something about
it, you know. And so that's whenwe're going to see results. We
(48:13):
may not see all the results wewant all at once, but we sure
are going to get from point A topoint B. And that's one of the
things Dr Lopez used to alwaystalk about point A to point B.
And I use that a lot because Ican picture that in my mind, you
know.
Erin Brinker (48:29):
So you are a full time lecturer at the University
of Central Florida. How are youras you're as you're talking to
students who want to becometeachers or be out in the
business world. How hopeful arethey? What are you seeing from
our young people?
Dr. Donita Grissom (48:46):
What I'm seeing is they come to us
hopeful because, you know, it'snew, it's exciting. But I talk
to them about the realitiesbecause our children, especially
our English language learners,they need a lot, and I always
(49:06):
have. I call it my come to Jesusmeeting. So, you know, it's the
why you want to be a teachermoment. Because, remember, that
was the first thing in our book.
You gotta reconnect, right? Yougotta connect with your wife. So
I start with that every, everyyear I start with that. Because
once I start training them onall the things that are
necessary for these students, Iwant them to always remember,
man, this is hard, but this iswhy I became a teacher, because
(49:30):
I want to make a difference inthose students lives. You know,
every profession in this wholewide world is there because of a
teacher. A teacher trained thosechildren right all along the
way, and so I have them connectto their why. And, you know, we
have some I've had some studentscome to me after we had that big
(49:51):
discussion, and they decide, youknow, maybe I don't need to be
into teaching because I justwanted to be a teacher because I
thought I'd get summers off the.
And I'm like, I'm 68
Erin Brinker (50:03):
that's the wrong reason to go into that
profession.
Dr. Donita Grissom (50:07):
You think you get off at 230 or three,
don't? You? Don't? I used to goto school. I taught high school.
I had to leave my house beforestartup, and I didn't get home
till after the sun was down. Soit was like living in Alaska, I
don't know.
Erin Brinker (50:26):
So, and that's an important lesson. You know, if
you if that deciding where youwill thrive and what you need
and what your real reason is,you have to do that. You have to
know and figure out what yourneeds are, and it's okay if
those needs change. So you areteacher for 10 years, or you
work in the legal profession for10 years, and you decide, you
know this isn't for me anymore.
I'm going to do something else.
That's okay too. That's
Dr. Donita Grissom (50:47):
okay too.
But the and you know what, onlyyou can know that you know if
you wake up in the morning andyou know, I still miss my kids
and I used to teach, but I Iknow I saw the need out there. I
tell everyone I should havebought stock in Kleenex, because
I dried so many tears. You know,they came to me because they
didn't understand what washappening in all their other
(51:09):
classes. So that's what was mydriving force, to go back to
school, get my PhD and become ateacher trainer. And so that's
why I did that, but it wasalways with those babies. I call
them my babies. They wereteenagers. Teenagers are just
babies in bigger bodies, indeed,
Erin Brinker (51:29):
actually. So one of our programs here at the
making hope happen foundation isand kits, Carnegie and toddler
success. And I've talked withthe faculty at our partnering
University, and they they referto some of our kids as three
majors, because the the brainsof a three year old and the
brains of a teenager, there's alot in common in how they react
(51:50):
to things, how they internalizethings, how they think. So, yes,
a three major.
Dr. Donita Grissom (51:56):
I haven't ever heard of that. That's a
good one. I love it. So back,back to the university students,
really quick. What I love aboutthem is they do come with fresh
ideas, and especially, let'sjust for just two seconds, we'll
talk about AI. So with AI, forexample, teachers are scared of
that right now, and AI is notgoing to replace us. I mean, it
(52:19):
may replace certain aspects ofour job, this can't replace us.
Okay? The AI does not have theheart of a teacher. No, not even
close, not even close. And so Itell them, we've got to get with
the program, and we need tolearn from our three majors and
our college students in classabout how to use this to make
(52:40):
education better. That's all sothat. That's a little state, you
know, a little advertisement forthat, and that's what I'm trying
to do at my university. Iremember when, when power points
and and Google and all of thatwas starting to be new, and I
always took the idea I'm goingto learn so from them, and so I
would assign my high schoolstudents to do PowerPoints. And
guess what? That's how I learnedto do problems. I
Erin Brinker (53:02):
see, there you go.
You learn by by teaching.
Dr. Donita Grissom (53:06):
You know, we we have a lot to learn. I will
say that there are a lot ofpeople in the university that
are choosing not to go intoteaching because of the
landscape of education. Now I'mhoping that we can make that
better with the work that we doin the schools and in our
(53:27):
districts and in schools andwith teachers around the world
as well. And that's my goal, andthat's what I wake up every
morning to do. And let me justsay this. You know, we started
at the beginning talking aboutthe book and how the book is.
This book is for teaching. Wework with people, people in the
(53:48):
workplace, people that areparents, people, people. And so
these practices are applicableto people. It's just this
particular book is The storiesare related to teachers, because
they're the ones that are goingto affect our T our students,
excuse me, in our classrooms.
And so that's our audience, andthat's our experience, but we
(54:11):
can help train other people howto maneuver with these spa
proven practices, which includeshope and all the elements of
hope. And so I just kind ofwanted to put that out there,
that if you picked up the bookand you were not a teacher, you
could read the book that wouldhelp you, and then you could
(54:32):
give it to a teacher who needsit, indeed. Well, I'm going
Erin Brinker (54:35):
to be buying it and giving it to my husband, who
is a teacher. Thank you. So sothe Danita Grissom, this has
been, we're about out of time.
This has been so incredible. Thebook is high five to thrive,
Five proven practices to unleashyour passion for teaching. How
do people find and follow you onsocial media? How do they engage
you as a professional educationor certified life coach, etc?
(54:57):
Yeah.
Dr. Donita Grissom (55:00):
Okay, so our book is on Amazon. It's also on
Barnes and Noble, and I believethat you will have the QR codes
for that. We do have an ebook.
The eBook is not available onAmazon, just the paperback copy,
but it's available with atBarnes and Noble. And our
information, you can get intouch with best Questers at info
(55:21):
dot best excuse meinfo@bestqueesters.net and we
have a telephone number there,but if you just want to contact
me, which is perfectly fine, youcan contact me at Doctor D
grissom@gmail.com or you cancall me, 407-417-2765, I would
love to speak withsuperintendents, principals,
(55:49):
teachers, PTA members, boardmembers. Anyone interested in
having workshops? Our our newestworkshop. We call it stay
thrive, and it's a 70 theme.
They have 70s themes based andDebbie Simoes, Vicky Keltner and
myself. That's the three of uswho wrote this book. We do
(56:12):
dynamic. We call em retreatsbecause teachers need to have
fun too. Indeed, they walk theywalk away empowered. And we have
follow up activities and things,because I it's not a one stop
all, and so we want to talk topeople out there, so you can
(56:32):
contact us at that address.
We're on Facebook, we are onLinkedIn, we are on Instagram as
best Questers. You can get usthere. And yes, we want to get
out there and spread hopewherever we go.
Erin Brinker (56:50):
Well, Dr, Danita Grissom, this has been
delightful. Is this interviewhas been fantastic. I hope that
you join us again. Thank you forso much for joining me today,
Dr. Donita Grissom (56:59):
and thank you for this incredible
opportunity and how you makehope happen.
Erin Brinker (57:04):
But that is about all we have time for today. I'm
Erin Brinker. You've beenlistening to the making hope
happen radio show. For moreinformation about the making
hope happen Foundation, go towww.makinghope.org That's
www.makinghope.org Have a greatweek, everybody, and I'll talk
to you next week.
Noraly Sainz (57:30):
Hi, my name is Noraly Sainz, and I am Program
Coordinator at uplift SanBernardino, a collective impact
initiative at the making hopehappen Foundation. And this is
my story in November of 2017 myhusband our four young sons and
I moved away from our familiesto San Bernardino with the hope
of reaching our goal of homeownership. In 2018 as our oldest
(57:53):
son started kindergarten, Iconnected with the school
district and learned aboutmaking hope happens. Kids
program with my oldest inkindergarten and my twins at
preschool, I had the opportunityto tote my youngest to the kids
parenting classes. In January of2020, my husband and our
family's breadwinnerunexpectedly passed away. I
found myself in a pandemic withmy sons and an uncertain future.
(58:16):
It was then that that oasis thatI found at kids turned into my
support system as the staff andfriends rallied around me while
my sons and I struggled to findour new normal. In October of
2020, after seven years as ahomemaker, I joined the making
hope happen foundation as aprogram coordinator for uplift
San Bernardino. This careeropportunity reignited my
(58:38):
family's dream of home ownershipin November of 2022 through the
mutual support of the uplift SanBernardino Housing Network, my
family was able to buy our firsthome in my role as program
coordinator, and as I connectwith other families in our
community, I can wholeheartedlyattest to the opportunities that
the foundation is bringing toour community and truly making
(59:00):
hope happen. For
Erin Brinker (59:01):
more information about the making hope happen
foundation and to make adonation, please visit
www.makinghope.org That'swww.makinghope.org your
donations make our workpossible. You.
Erin, good morning, everyone. I'm Erin
(00:11):
Brinker, and this is the makinghope happen radio show. So glad
to have you with me on thisbeautiful summer day. And I
gotta tell you, I'm broadcastingfrom inland, Southern
California, the Inland Empire.
And we have had such agloriously mild summer. Last
summer, by this time, it was allover 100 degrees. And it's been
in the upper nine, upper 80s tomid 90s for the last month. And
(00:33):
it's been amazing. So I I alwaysstart out by saying what I'm
grateful for. I am grateful forthat. I am so grateful for that.
So got a great interview to usethe word great one more time.
I've got a great interview foryou today, and let's get
started. Do you ever have those?
(00:56):
Well, what I call God moments. Iknow this is not a faith based
show, but what I call Godmoments, and I'm having one of
those right now. My next guest,Danita Grissom, is a senior
lecturer at the University ofCentral Florida. She's the CEO
of best Questers LLC. She's aprofessional education
consultant and coach, certifiedload certified life coach and
(01:19):
motivational and keynotespeaker. She's also the author
of high five to thrive, Fiveproven practices to unleash your
passion for teaching. And ofcourse, you know what's more
important than the education ofour children? Danita Grissom,
welcome to the show.
Dr. Donita Grissom (01:36):
Thank you so much. I'm so honored and happy
to be here
Erin Brinker (01:40):
so so tell us about who you are and what led
you into the teachingprofession.
Dr. Donita Grissom (01:46):
Well, I've always been a kid magnet. I
guess you would say I lovechildren. I feel more
comfortable with children than Ido adults most of the time. Kids
are fun, and I love to have fun.
However, I'll just will add thisreally quick, teaching is my
second profession, legalassistant, paralegal. I ran law
(02:07):
firms for over 20 years, andthen I went back to teaching, or
went into teaching, I guess, forthe first time. So that is sort
of my, my history there, butsince then, I have taught K
through 12 ESOL students. I haveI taught music for one year, and
(02:28):
I have experience in all thegrade levels, but my predominant
teaching experience was at thehigh school level, and I fell in
love with them so but ESOL is mypassion. I love people from
other countries and cultures.
They feed my soul as I alwaystry to feed theirs. And during
(02:52):
that time, what I was findingwith my high school students is
that they all came to me withsome sort of trauma, and I was
concerned that we weren't ableto meet all of their needs,
their holistic, you know,teenage, personal needs in the
classroom. And a lot of themcame with a lot of baggage,
(03:18):
whether it be just leaving theircountry and leaving everything
they knew, including theirlanguage, leaving because of
some sort of war, which I had, alot of those students, lots of
different deep situations. Sofast forward, I began my
doctoral degree because I wantedto, I wanted to help them, and I
(03:41):
wanted to find ways to helpthem. So I was in a doctoral
program. And two years into thedoctoral program, I was in Haiti
doing some research for mydissertation, and I left on a
Sunday, and my husband had gonewith me, and on Friday morning,
(04:03):
I get a call that no one everwants to get, and that call was
that he had had an aconstruction accident, and he
was gone. Oh my gosh. So that
Erin Brinker (04:16):
became, that's horrible. I'm so sorry. Let me
sit with that for a second.
That's okay, okay, that's that'sincredibly traumatic. I think
the only thing worse would belosing a child. It would be
Dr. Donita Grissom (04:28):
but it was in that moment. I mean, I was
like, No, you know, you can'timagine. I just talked to him at
830 last night. How could thisbe? Everything in my world came
crashing down. And theinteresting thing was that I was
working with people whoobviously one year from the
earthquake, and I was doingresearch surrounding some of
(04:52):
that and interviewing people.
But when I finished. Just thatthose interviews, and when this
happened, I realized, you know,I can't transcribe those tapes
because my husband's voice wasin all of those, oh yeah. And so
every, every goal that I had,every thing that I had hoped to
(05:17):
do was no more. It died withhim, basically, and I just
didn't know what to do withmyself. I didn't I couldn't pick
myself. I was paralyzed for thatmoment. I was hopeless. Okay?
So, oddly enough, my cognate Ihad chose was social work
(05:37):
counseling, because that wasgoing to help me develop,
whatever it was I was going todevelop to help you know, these,
these people who are, areimmigrants and Esau students.
Erin Brinker (05:51):
That was an ESOL is English as a second language,
correct, English as a secondlanguage.
Dr. Donita Grissom (05:55):
Yes, that that's the field that I that my
PhD is in, and my master'sdegree and the whole thing. So
so as the story goes, I woke upone morning, I was in the
shower, didn't know what I wasgoing to do. And I know you
talked about faith at the verybeginning of the story. This is
(06:18):
my faith part. I felt thebiggest hug on the inside of me,
that's the only way I know howto describe it, and I felt this
nudging that I had to get backto my doctoral work, and I had
to finish this thing that I wassupposed to do, even though I
didn't know what that thing was.
So I went back to school, and mysocial work professor called me
(06:39):
in one day and began talking tome about, you know, what are you
going to do about your study?
And I said, I can't do what Iwas doing. It was about
education, but it was somethingtotally different, and I won't
go into that. That's anotherday, another story. But I told
her my past, which I kind oftold you the Reader's Digest
(07:01):
version earlier, and I said, I'minterested in the trauma, and I
was measuring some things inHaiti with, you know, illiterate
Haitian people there, and Ididn't want to lose them,
because it took too long todevelop that relationship. When
you do research in a third worldcountry, it's not easy. And so
she said, Well, you're too farremoved to study trauma, but you
(07:25):
can study hope. Ah, I had noidea what she was talking about,
but I literally burst intotears, because in my prayer
time, I'm not an artist, but Ihave been drawing these little
hope chests, and didn't evenknow why. So it really resonated
in my whole body, you know,spirit, soul and body. So that's
(07:45):
what I did. I began reading andstudying every single thing I
could get my hands on abouthope. And I did do my
dissertation about hope. Imeasured hope levels of
illiterate and people in Haiti,and it was a very interesting
study and and maybe another daywe'll talk about that. The
results of that, however, I justwant to throw this in really
(08:09):
quick. What I found out is thatanybody can have hope. It's
related to our cultural nuances,our cultural differences also.
So, for example, the Haitianpeople, their goals are not the
same as Western goals. So theywere able to find strategies to
(08:31):
meet some of their goals inlife. And it touched me so much
to be able to work with thesepeople and do that. But fast
forward. A little bit. When Iwas doing my dissertation, I ran
into some snags. You can imaginedoing research in a third world
country, indeed, yes. So I hadsome big snags. I had that
(08:53):
moment one day when I ran out, Iwas I was out at the beach, and
I ran out to the beach, and Iwas screaming like, you know, I
don't know what to do. I'mhaving this brick wall moment
and and it's like, am I going tohave to throw all this in the
trash can or what? So I didn'tobviously have to throw it in
the trash can. But what happenedwas my mama, who's no longer
(09:16):
with us, my little mama, shecalled me up a couple days
later, honey. I don't know ifthis will mean anything to you
or not, but I read this today inthe newspaper. This man just
wrote a new book called makinghope happen by Doctor Shane
Lopez. And so I'm like, Mom, Idon't know, but I'm going to
(09:38):
find out. I went and got thebook immediately. I read the
book, and it literally filled,filled my heart with such hope.
Erin Brinker (09:46):
I bet it did.
Dr. Donita Grissom (09:48):
I contacted him, and he answered me, which
was phenomenal, because a lot ofpeople you know in his position
might not have but he did. And.
And I have to tell you that DrLopez was because he's no longer
with us, unfortunately, and I'mso sad about that. The most
incredibly kind person, hopefuldown to earth. He was amazing.
(10:15):
He he agreed to be on mydissertation committee. Oh, wow,
yes, he helped me so much. Andwhat I didn't know was that,
unfortunately, he was not doingwell then. But I didn't know,
didn't know that he that wasthere for me. We got through the
snags. He helped me so muchbecause, you know, he was a
(10:38):
senior Gallup Poll researcher,as well as all of the other
things that he did. And so Ialways say, hope found me, you
know, and his His work becamefoundational to me and in my
personal life and in myprofessional life. So moving
(11:01):
forward, we lost him too early,and now I feel that one of his
many batons was passed to me.
And so I've continued writing,researching, reading, talking
about hope, everywhere I go toall people. Right now, I'm
(11:23):
focusing on teachers, becausethat is the profession that I am
in now. But I have been in thebusiness world. So look out,
business world. I'm coming foryou later down the road.
Erin Brinker (11:33):
They need it. Boy, they need it. And I think it's
important, like to kind of closethe loop that I opened, saying
that, you know that this is aGod moment, the making hope
happen. Foundation is thefoundation where I work in this
namesake for this podcast andradio show, and the the work
that it supports the SanBernardino City Unified School
(11:54):
District, and which also has aconnection to Shane Lopez as our
former superintendent, Dr DaleMarsden became, you know, became
you know, became thesuperintendent in San
Bernardino. He he wanted toinject hope into the work,
because it felt very hopeless inthe district. People were
resigned to just let people, letthe kids fail, like, you know,
(12:17):
that they just well, those kidscan't perform, you know, let's
just they are who they are andwhatever. And which is horrible,
which is absolutely horrible,but that kind of malaise had had
was a wet blanket over thedistrict, and Dale Marson came
in and said, Nope, we're notgoing to do this. And he turned
the district around and and thegraduation rate here went from
(12:38):
65% to about 90% and engagedfamilies. Had huge town hall
meetings with residents andemployees. You know, teachers,
both and so classified andcertificated staff and all of
the all the different parties.
And he did that throughout histenure, and really changed the
motto of the district to makinghope happen with permission from
(12:58):
Dr Lopez and the foundation thenwas launched to help support
that mission. And it reallycomes down to hope is the
driving force for positiveoutcomes, how you see yourself,
and how you see how you fit inthe world and what's possible
changes everything.
Dr. Donita Grissom (13:20):
You're absolutely 100% correct, and I
would love to come to yourschool district, because
everything that you're doing andyour foundation and what's
happening in the San Bernardinoschool districts, that's the
mission for best Questers.
That's what we do and what we'redoing, and what we're wanting to
do nationally andinternationally, because our
(13:42):
work does go from across theborders.
Erin Brinker (13:47):
Yes. So, so tell me about I'm really interested
in the work that you did in inHaiti, and kind of how you how
you then wrapped up your yourresearch, and what you learned,
and has anything come of that?
Dr. Donita Grissom (14:01):
So what became of that is that,
obviously I've written someacademic journal articles
because I am, you know, a fulltime faculty member, and this
that what I've found hasinformed the whole field. Okay?
(14:23):
Because a lot of people, theylook at third world countries
and they think, for example, whyare they sitting on the side of
the road while there's just halfmade buildings? Why aren't they
doing something? And what Ilearned was, first of all the
NGOs, they use the money thatthey got to help Haiti, but they
(14:47):
ran out of money. And one of thebig key takeaways was, you know,
you, you know the saying youcan, you can train a person to
see, what is it they to fish? Ifyou don't treat them to fish,
they can't catch their cells,right?
Erin Brinker (15:02):
You give them a fish they eat for a day. Yeah?
You teach them how to fish,they'll eat. That's
Dr. Donita Grissom (15:07):
it. Thank you. Thank you. Sure. So that's
what was happening, and what Ilearned through all my research
was that they wanted to dosomething, but they didn't know
how, so they they wereparalyzed. And what we call, we
call that hopeless. And so whatI tell people is, and what, what
(15:28):
I've learned through thatdesperate situation was, no
matter what situation you findyourself in, hope, research says
you don't have to stay there.
Things can change, but hoperequires making a choice, right?
And so it does, yeah. And so ifyou don't mind, can I just kind
(15:53):
of go into what hope it reallyis? Yeah, please, please do.
Because what we also learned isthat most people don't really
know what hope is. What are wetalking about? So Dr kelchner,
who's one of my partners, Vickykelchner and I, we did a study
several years ago because wewere working with teachers, and
we were wanting to help teachershelp, you know, raise the level
(16:14):
of hope in their children in theclassroom, because Dr Lopez and
others that worked with him havedone so much research on the
benefits of children having highhope and in the classroom. So we
were, we were working withteachers in that regard, and
what we found out is, whoa, wegotta back up and punt because
they don't really know what itis and how to how to raise those
(16:38):
levels, because they don'treally know what it is. So we
did a whole study and and thatarticle, by the way, has been
one of the most cited articlesin in the field regarding those
regarding those topics. So Iknow you asked me about how it
relates to Haiti, but Haiti ismy my my big personal
(16:59):
visualization when I think ofhopelessness, because at that
time, they were feelinghopelessness regarding a lot of
their situations. But then, butthen once, I started learning
what hope is, which I am fixingto share what it really is, I
began seeing how we could helpthem with strategies and
(17:21):
strategies, how to make theirparticular goals come to life.
So what is hope? A lot of peoplethink it's just wishful
thinking, you know, like, I wishI had a million dollars. I wish
that I could go to Hawaii, youknow, things that they dream
about. And there's nothing wrongwith that, but for actual hope
to be in existence, you havegoals or problems. So I usually
(17:44):
ask everybody, is there anypeople in this room who don't
have any problems? Of course, itdoesn't exist. You don't exist,
right? You're not real. Do youhave goals? So the way I like to
frame that is that problems canbecome goals with possibilities.
Okay, so we look at goals andproblems, and I kind of wrap
(18:08):
those into the same bucket.
Let's turn that into a goal.
Let's turn that problem into agoal. And education is a perfect
place, because we work withgoals every day, with our
students. But anyway,nevertheless, that the next
component is you have astrategy. That's the pathway,
that's how, how are we going todo this thing? And then we have
(18:29):
the agency factor. And theagency factor is that place
where we get the gas in our tankto keep moving from point A to
point B. It includes motivation.
It includes the mindset. That'sthe place where I work a lot,
(18:50):
because neuroscience will tellyou that your thoughts become
your actions. And so in orderfor you to get from one place to
another, if your thoughts aren'tlined up in a way, we call it
hot hot, hot thinking. Hopeoperational thinking that we've
coined that little phrase hotthinking. If you don't have
(19:13):
that, then you're going to bedetained and hindered, because
you're not going to have thecourage to take that next
pathway step. So those threeingredients must be in operation
for there be true hope tohappen. So we work, we dissect
those three components, and wework on those we work on goal
setting. We work on how to makethose goals where they're
(19:39):
smaller. We call them smallbiggies, you know, because all
three of them work together,they weave together constantly.
It's not like, Okay, we're goingto work on this, and now then
we're going to work on ourthoughts, and now we're going to
work on our motivation. Itdoesn't work that way. It's all
working together at the sametime, simultaneously, and a big
(19:59):
factor. Is celebrating too. Sowhen you make you realize that
small Biggie, you celebrate someway. And you know, we don't do
that enough.
Erin Brinker (20:07):
We don't, we don't celebrate the small wins at all.
Dr. Donita Grissom (20:11):
And that is really like stopping at the gas
station and putting more gas inthe tank. Oh, wow, I did that. I
can do that again. Okay, youknow, it may be something a
little different, but it's like,you know, I've never done this
before, but I'm going to trythis strategy now. There's
another notion, and it's not acomponent of Doctor Snyder's
(20:35):
hope theory, which Dr Snyder wasthe theorist who developed this
theory that Dr Lopez, and manyof us work on but he does talk
about it, and we call it thehope agent, the connector, that
person who's been there and donethat, who's going to work and
walk with me, because there's awhole strand of incredible
(20:56):
research about the benefits ofnot walking alone, and what
happens when we are inisolation. I mean, think of
covid for goodness sakes. Lookwhat all happened to us. You
know, we got we got depressed,we did and gained 25 pounds or
more, and some people becamealcoholics, and, yeah, many,
many other things. So with thatbeing said, we're not making a
(21:22):
theory or a component out of it,but we we preach it, we talk
about it, we include it, becauseI think it's really most
important. You know, togetherwe're better. That's one of our
things that we say all of thetime. And let me tell you why,
because the theory does say thatthere's some people when you
(21:44):
measure hope, and by the way, wedo measure hope, we can measure
hope with instruments developedand researched highly by Dr
Snyder. And by the way, histheory is the most researched
and most written about theory inthe field of positive
psychology. So let me just putthat in out there anyway. With
if you measure hope and youlook, some people are stronger.
(22:08):
They may have a stronger levelof pathway thinking where they
know, hey, I have ideas. I justdon't have the motivation or the
mindset to carry them out. Andthat's when you need someone to
help you with your motivationand your mindset and your your I
can do thinking kind of thing.
And what we're
Erin Brinker (22:29):
talking about is not toxic positivity, because
there's a lot of conversationsbeing had about people who are
are positive to the point ofbeing toxic, where they're not
looking at reality at all. Andthat's This is very different
from that, very
Dr. Donita Grissom (22:43):
different.
And I'm really glad you broughtthat up as matter of fact, I
just wrote something about thatyesterday. So so let me just
give you an illustration. So oneday we were driving down the
road, and, you know, you get tothis mountain, and it's like,
well, I the map is telling theGPS is telling me to go
straight, but if I go straight,I'm going to we're going to run
right into that mountain. Okay,many times in our goals, we run
(23:06):
up upon obstacles. Okay, well,toxic positivity is to pretend
basically that that mountain andthat obstacle is not there, and,
oh, that doesn't matter. We'regoing to get through it. We had
that ability. We can doeverything's okay, just get over
it, whatever, whatever,whatever. And that's not true.
Or, you know, it could besomeone sick, but that positive
(23:30):
psycho, or, excuse me, toxicpsychology would say, Oh, I feel
great when you have 103temperature. That's toxic. What
is positive, and what we call,you know, gives you hopefulness,
is when you take your you'regoing to have obstacles.
Sometimes, believe me, itdoesn't matter if we come
(23:53):
together with the best hopeaction plan, where we really
talk about our goals and wereally get our pathways, and we
really get our thinking straightand our motivation, we have our
hope agents. We're going to haveobstacles. Any person out there
who is a motivational speaker,you know, self help person, and
they tell you we have all theanswers. Run from them as fast
(24:14):
as you can, because no one does,because noone does. And what I
say is, if you want change, ifyou want these things to happen,
and you do nothing, you will getnothing. But if you do
something, something willhappen. And so we, we help with
that. That's why we, we put fiveproven strategies and practices
in our book, not 10, becausepeople can't handle all that the
(24:36):
same time. We're we'rerealistic, right? Yes, so let's
go back. I'm glad you said thetoxic stuff, so we got that out
of the way. No, this iscognitive. Hope. Is very much a
cognitive psychologicalconstruct. It's how God made us
as humans. We all have, whetheryou believe in God or not.
(24:58):
That's just the way we're madeup. And hope can be learned. It
can be taught. It can grow. Itcan diminish at times, as you
know, I told you my story, mypersonal life, earthquake story,
you know, at that point in time,I was hopeless. I wasn't a
hopeless person in in general,I'm pretty hopeful person, but
(25:22):
at that time, so there's two,there's two different kinds of
hope, but that's a whole that'sa little bit deeper topic. So
let's go, let's go back to thethings that we can do. So if do
you have any questions so far?
Erin Brinker (25:39):
Well, I, first of all, I'm riveted. This is, this
is really wonderful. And I havethings, you know, it really
seems to me that hope is thedifference between life
happening to you and youhappening to life. Oh my gosh. I
love that. Everything, everybodyhas those horrible things. I
mean, in Haiti, we'll use Haitias the example. You know,
(25:59):
earthquakes, famines, corruptgovernment, you know, all the
things that they deal with on aregular basis, and if and if,
hope can be instilled there.
What a difference that couldmake. Because it is a mindset
shift that, again, you're not avictim, you are a how do you go
from victimhood to survivor. Anda survivor is a powerful
(26:21):
position. Victim is a powerlessposition.
Dr. Donita Grissom (26:27):
And I love how you said that. And then I
take that a little bit stepfurther. Is that each person who
becomes a victor. Now you go,help somebody else. Be one
indeed. You go be that hope,agent and and we, you know, I
was just working in the schools.
I think about, well, teachers.
And this is, let me just kind oftell you why we decided to stop
(26:51):
and write this book. Because myfield is in, you know, English
for Speakers of Other Languages.
And I've traveled the worldtraining teachers how to do
that. That's, you know, and I dothat at the university, but
because I've always beeninterested in the person and the
people, actually, we'll justwhisper this actually more than
how to teach them English, butEnglish is a great tool, and
(27:11):
they need that. But I'm dealingwith people, and so that's why I
became a life coach. And youknow, I'm so interested in hope
theory, because it, it's sohigher people with higher hope
levels. They're happier people.
They stay at their jobs longer.
They're able to strategize andwork themselves out of those big
problems better. They're able togive, give that hope, and
(27:34):
they're able to set more goals,realize more goals that at
school. A few little facts aboutthat. Children with higher hope
levels, they have been proven tomake a grade whole grade level
higher than the lower hopestudents. Wow, that that's right
(27:54):
there. That's all I have to say.
When I go talk to teachers,their ears perk up. What?
Because, you know those teacherevaluations are important, so
student achievement andoutcomes, that's important,
right? And there's lessdiscipline problems when you
have children with higher hope.
And so there's many, many morebenefits, but those are some
(28:18):
really great benefits rightthere to start out with. So I
was thinking, as I was going outand training teachers, teachers
would say to me, I know you havegreat strategies for for
teaching in the classroom, butplease don't teach us anymore,
because we'll have to beresponsible for and we're
responsible for so much rightnow. Yep, they have such
(28:40):
fatigue, and I'm so overwhelmed.
Yeah, that,
Erin Brinker (28:45):
and I have to speak to that really quickly,
yes, not to interrupt. But no,they are. They are. Education is
a bright, shiny object, meaning,meaning that everybody pays
attention to it, and everybodythinks they know how to do it
because they were students. Andnew, this is terrible new
fangled ideas, or, you know,crazy new theories, or just new
(29:08):
theories are dumped on them allthe time. So they're trying to
manage their classroom. They'veall these different
personalities, kids coming toschool hungry, not cared for,
you know, all the things trauma,all the things that kids come to
school with, and maybe they'renot ready to learn, and teachers
have to do to manage all ofthat, and then, plus learn
(29:29):
whatever new fangled thing isbeing laid on top of it, they
are overwhelmed andunderappreciated and burned out
Dr. Donita Grissom (29:38):
absolutely and those children that come to
school that way, research tellsus that when these children are
greeted with teachers who areemotionally healthy, they show
(29:58):
up in the classroom. Uh, they'remindful in the moment, and they
create these atmospheres wherethe effective filter is low.
What I mean by that is they havea trusting, caring, safe
environment for those students,and whenever they feed into
(30:20):
those needs of their students.
Students are going to learnbetter. Their outcomes will be
better. However, when thatteacher is stressed, burned out,
overworked, fatigued, thechildren feel that stress. And
there's a part in the back ofthe brain. And I can't say the
(30:40):
word very good, but anyway, itstarts with an A, and it shuts
off. That's
Erin Brinker (30:46):
the amygdala.
Thank you. That one
Dr. Donita Grissom (30:50):
hard time with that word. My southern
English just doesn't want to saythat word, right? And but it
shuts off. And it's like thatmountain. There's nothing going
in, baby, yep, and they'rescared and they're and that
they're going to act out, orthey're going to zone out, and
teachers are going to get mad atthem or upset with them. Why
(31:13):
aren't you paying attention? Orwhatever they do. Now, not all
teachers do that. Okay, I'm notsaying everyone does that, but
that's part of the big problem.
And so they all want the samething. They want the student
outcomes, but we've got to backup and punt again. What are we
going to do for the teacher? Andthat's why high five to thrive
was born, because my partnersand I stopped and it's like,
(31:37):
whoa. We have got to dosomething to help teachers,
because in helping the teachersto develop, you know, we can't,
we can't erase. I want to take abig eraser, and I want to erase
all the low salaries, and I wantto erase all the leadership
issues that, that, you know,that we have. And by the way,
principals and superintendentsand the staff and counselors,
(32:00):
they're all overworked andunderpaid and overwhelmed too.
Okay, so nobody this. This is inthe whole entire field of
education right now, even peopleare university level. Let me
just say there's so muchhappening in the world right now
in education. Education is beingshut shake
Erin Brinker (32:19):
it to the core. It is, it is. It absolutely is yes.
So this
Dr. Donita Grissom (32:23):
is why we wrote this book. Because we want
to help educators to thrive, sotheir students can thrive. We
all want the same things. Butguess what? Professional
development doesn't always valueprofessional development,
regarding teacher wellness andself care, because they want
(32:47):
that new fangled idea out there,but that new fangled ideal is
not even going to last with theteacher because they're too
overwhelmed. So you know, how dowe get school districts to
realize that we gotta take careof our educators, no matter if
(33:07):
they're superintendent,principals, para professionals,
teachers, counselors, whoever.
And so we came up with theseideas, and we wrote this book
with stories from the field andour proven practices, we tried
to make the book fun as well,because we, you know, and
engaging not too long. But it'spowerful, and we're seeing
(33:30):
teachers be able to regain theirenergy and their joy. And one of
the things, the first thing inour book, actually, is an
exercise to reconnect to theirwhy? Why did I want to become a
teacher? Because those we callit the dream not so true days,
(33:52):
and those dream not so true dayswhen your your class is falling
apart, you know, they'rethrowing spit balls at each
other, or whatever you'rehaving. One of those days you
can forget, why did I want tobecome a teacher? But see
teaching to us is a calling, andif you have that heart of a
teacher, you're always going tobe a teacher. But it's powerful
(34:14):
to reconnect to your why itsounds simple. And guess what?
Most of these strategies aresimple, but as I talked about
hope earlier, it always requiresa choice, and then it becomes
required to make it a habit. Andwe teach you how to do that in
the book and in our workshops.
(34:35):
By the way we work on how do wemake this a habit? And then,
obviously, I have two chaptersin the book devoted completely
to every, you know, all theaspects of hope and and how
we're going to do that. And thenwe have a chapter regarding the
connections. And it's, it's veryit's very powerful. And then we
have the mind body connection.
Because, see, we, you know, wealways forget about that,
(34:56):
because people think that's
Erin Brinker (34:58):
kind of, woo, woo.
You. If you have trauma, thebody remembers, and that's
physiological. It's not, it'snot airy fairy or whatever it
is. It you your mind may beputting it aside, but your body
remembers, and so it'll manifestitself in aches and pains. It'll
manifest itself in a chroniccold, or, you know, whatever,
because it suppresses immunesystem, headaches, all of that.
Yeah,
Dr. Donita Grissom (35:21):
yes, anxiety attacks, panic attacks, all of
those things.
Erin Brinker (35:25):
But you really talking about that? The
challenge in a school is it's ateacher can certainly create an
oasis in his or her classroom,but it's it's challenging
because the school itself has aculture, and a district itself
has a culture. So if you don'thave buy in on a school level or
a district level, it becomesmore difficult to create that,
(35:47):
that space in your ownclassroom, because you're
impacted by, you know, a childgoes, say, middle school kid, he
goes from classroom to classroomevery 55 minutes. And, you know,
once one the culture in oneclass could be vastly different
from another, and he's wound upfrom one class, and he's not
going to come into your classand be calm. And so, you know,
how do you, how do you changethe culture and organization in
(36:08):
an organization, a whole schoolor a whole district, so that you
that you have a better alignedor a better working system?
Well, that's, I know, that's abig question.
Dr. Donita Grissom (36:18):
That's a big question. And actually last
week, I was in Nashville at theinnovative school Summit, where
there were 3000 educators fromaround the United States and
like minded people talking aboutall these things that we're
talking about today and more.
And we have to get the messageout there. So one of the things
(36:39):
that we're doing today here onthis podcast, hopefully we're
getting that message out there.
You want you want change, thenyou are right. We have to
address this. You talk aboutteacher retention. We have to
address these things, but for itto be a more transformative
change, you're right, it needsto happen from the top. I hate
(37:03):
to say top down, like down isbetter or worse. I'm not putting
a quantifier on it, but I'mtalking about all the people
involved, even the parents,okay, especially parents. And
that will getting that wholecommunity together, like you did
in San Bernardino, and workingwith all of the stakeholders in
education, and then take it thateven step further of well, let's
(37:27):
how so now we're that we'redoing this. How are we going to
work with the children on this?
And how are we going to haveaccountability? You know, you
can pick up this book, butwithout having this follow
through, some people will, willput those practices into into
play, but others will not,because they really need those
connections, which we, you know,we help provide, and I'm
(37:48):
teaching them how so our wholenotion is what you just said. We
want to be able to work witheveryone and provide a place for
them to do that.
Erin Brinker (38:01):
You know it's business school 101, that you
cannot expect your employees totreat your customers any better
than you treat those employees.
Oh, that's beautiful and, andit's true, right? So if you have
a toxic work environment, yourcustomers aren't going to have a
joyful experience in your storeor whatever. And the same thing.
And I would say even more soexists in education. It's
(38:22):
absolutely, there's, you don'tsell widgets, there's, it's a
people business, and creatingthat, that environment that has
both accountability and support,because you need both, is
critical to that beingsuccessful. And it's, it's,
it's, it's simple, but it's noteasy,
Dr. Donita Grissom (38:43):
and it goes back to a choice. It it's a
choice and it's a habit. Youknow, when we when we think
about what we call flip thescript, those mindset changes,
and we call it hope hackingthoughts. And we want those
thoughts to be flipped intohopeful thoughts that give us
that, the thoughts to makeactions that are going to get us
(39:06):
where we're closer to where wewant to go. So I wanted, oh,
sorry, please forgive me. That'sokay. And Dr Carolyn Leith,
she's a neuroscientist. She hasa lot of books out there, and
I've read every one of them. Ilove her work, and she'll tell
you that it takes about 62 daysfor you to notice a hope. We
(39:28):
call it, like I said, a hopehacking. Thought, I don't like
to call it negative or positive,but I know that that's what they
use in positive psychology. Butfor me, I like to just say hope
hacking, and to to we call catchit in the in our book, we call
it catch it. You have to noticeit. See, sometimes we don't even
notice that, that we have thosethoughts that come, and you have
(39:52):
to notice what they are and andwe talk about that in our book.
But then you have to catch it,and then you have to release it.
You can't. 10 that it wasn'tthere, and some of those
thoughts you have to grieve themand leave them, grieve it and
leave it okay. You knowknowledge that it's there, but
don't internalize it likethere's something bad wrong with
(40:13):
you, because that's not true.
And no it can be fixed. So onceyou recognize it and you catch
it, you release it. Now we startreplacing it. Well, when I first
started doing that in my ownpersonal life, I had no idea
what to replace them with,right? So we, we have a whole
section in our book, not forevery single, you know, whole
packing thought there is in theworld, but to give a lot of
(40:36):
illustration of where to start,you know, where do we start
doing this. And so you can writethem down, put them on sticky
notes. You know, different,different tactics we have in the
book of how to do that, butafter you practice that. So for
example, you know, you want to,you want to lose five pounds,
and you think, I'll never dothis. You know, I I'd love
donuts, and I whatever. I'llnever do this. But then I catch
(40:58):
myself saying, I'll never do itto the next step. I might say,
well, I'm going to try, youknow, and I'm going to tell my
daughter, hey, when you nexttime you hear me say, I you
know, I'm no good at this. Ican't do it. Remind me, Hey,
Mom, you said you were trying.
Oh, that's right, I'm trying. SoI got my help agent to help me
get this momentum going. Andwhat happens in your brain. We
(41:23):
call it neuroplasticity. That'sthe big scientific word. But
your your brain can change withmaking those changes, those
pivots, with those flipping thescript thoughts, and in two
months, if you're really payingattention, then all of a sudden,
one day, it's just going to bean automatic that whole packing
(41:46):
thought will not be yourautomatic go to when you're when
you're looking at donuts. So,and I can attest to that my own
life, that I can't tell you thatevery single thing's changed. I
have to work on this all thetime, right?
Erin Brinker (42:06):
It's an ongoing thing. You know, this is not a
mastery thing. This is anongoing I'm continuing to learn
kind of thing that is
Dr. Donita Grissom (42:13):
so true, and we have to remind each other.
You know, my business partnerthis morning was reminding me of
some some thought patterns, youknow, in her own life. And I'm
like, You know what? It's sotrue, we have to reread our
books cuz we're forgetting, youknow. And so I don't want anyone
to think that, you know, put thebook down before they even
(42:38):
start, because they think, Oh, Ican't do this. No, that is not.
This book is written from theperspective of, hey, we've been
there and we've done this, andwe're still doing this, but
let's help each other. Let's,let's get together,
Erin Brinker (42:51):
hope. And I love that. And I am thinking about,
you know, back to the teacher,talking about teachers, there's
a lot of fear in classroomsright now, part of it is because
of cell phones, because anybodycould take a random clip and
then, you know, take it out ofcontext and blow it up, and you
know, your career is at stake.
And what's happening is teachersare afraid to break up fights.
(43:13):
They're afraid to get in themiddle of confrontations,
because they're afraid thatsomething will end up on Tiktok
that will end their career. Andpeople say, Well, if they're not
doing anything wrong, so if youdon't understand, the most
innocuous thing can be blown upinto well, they should have
known this, or they should haveknown that, and they're
inadequate, inadequatelytrained. Did you at this
conference that you went to inNashville, or in your other
(43:35):
work? Have you all talked aboutthat level of fear?
Dr. Donita Grissom (43:40):
I was not at any workshops, unfortunately,
that talked about that. However,I I do know that there was a lot
of talk about fear, but fromdifferent angles. And there were
some, some workshops there aboutguns in the school, keeping
children safe. You know, I couldgo down the list of things.
(44:02):
There were workshops there, butI wasn't in those. So I'm sorry
I can't. No, that's okay, and Ineed to add, but I will say one
thing about that. First of all,is the awareness. Second of all,
is learning how to talk aboutdifficult subjects. And number
three, is putting the peopletogether to to come up with a
(44:23):
plan together and and that's ahope action plan. We have this
problem, right? Indeed, yes. So,so you can't just ignore it.
You've got and you've got to dosomething about it. So put your
teams together. And there was alot of talk about folks
connecting and collaboratingteams, starting from the top
down, put all the peopletogether and then put it into
(44:47):
practice. It so for whateverthat, whatever it is,
Erin Brinker (44:51):
and I, I think that's important, you know it. I
think the biggest thing is thatpeople, they feel alone. And
like you said, that this, thiswork. Not possible in a vacuum,
right? You have to do itconnecting with the people
around you, because they becomenot only your accountability
partners, because that has anegative connotation, but your
but your cheerleader, yoursupport, your your hope partner.
Dr. Donita Grissom (45:15):
It becomes, well, let me just tell you a
little bit of the research aboutconnectivity with people you
know, you know the saying thatour bodies have happy
endorphins, they do and andhappy juice, I guess you can
call it. And when you're in afruitful, thriving relationship
(45:36):
with anyone, your body is givingyou that happy juice, and so
when you get that happy juice,then you're more let's more
inclined to look at things withmore of those hopeful ideas.
(45:57):
Doesn't mean that the realobstacles are there, but those
obstacles are there, and we'retrying to work out solutions.
But if, versus if, you're inisolation and you're not
connecting, you're not havinghappy juices and you're doing
nothing, then, as I saidearlier, that's hopelessness and
you're paralyzed and nothing'sgoing to happen. So it's a
(46:18):
choice. Some people don't liketo be involved with other
people, and that's a fear, orwhatever it may be. It might
just be their preference. Maybethey don't even know that they
need other people. Maybe they'rejust, you know, I've known some
people that think I can doeverything by myself, but guess
what? You can't, right? I mean,you can, you can, but, but
(46:39):
you're gonna think about pickingup a heavy object. You're just
gonna pick it up and get itfurther if you have help you
Erin Brinker (46:47):
do and your circle doesn't have to be 1000 people.
It could be five.
Dr. Donita Grissom (46:51):
It can be two sometimes, you know, I mean,
whatever it takes. And, youknow, relationships are funny
things. I mean, that's a wholeother thing of how to operate in
good relationships and in goodcollaborations. That's a whole
nother field of study. But youhave to start somewhere, because
(47:11):
right now there's so many thingsflying around and happening with
loss of funding, you know, withteachers leaving the field, with
new standards, with people notbeing sure of what they are
supposed to do, with having newthings in this school, but only
one or two people are doingthem, not everybody, and so on.
(47:34):
All the different things. All ofthose can't be solved overnight.
But leaders, we need you to getyour healing so you can pull
your team together.
Erin Brinker (47:46):
You know, yes, you can't pour from an empty cup.
Dr. Donita Grissom (47:49):
That's it.
And we, and I call hope is thatgift that keeps on giving. You
know, when you're doing thesethings, and you include all of
different ingredients of hope,and those help levels rise,
because they will. And youcelebrate the successes, you
know. You don't just complainabout it, you do something about
it, you know. And so that's whenwe're going to see results. We
(48:13):
may not see all the results wewant all at once, but we sure
are going to get from point A topoint B. And that's one of the
things Dr Lopez used to alwaystalk about point A to point B.
And I use that a lot because Ican picture that in my mind, you
know.
Erin Brinker (48:29):
So you are a full time lecturer at the University
of Central Florida. How are youras you're as you're talking to
students who want to becometeachers or be out in the
business world. How hopeful arethey? What are you seeing from
our young people?
Dr. Donita Grissom (48:46):
What I'm seeing is they come to us
hopeful because, you know, it'snew, it's exciting. But I talk
to them about the realitiesbecause our children, especially
our English language learners,they need a lot, and I always
(49:06):
have. I call it my come to Jesusmeeting. So, you know, it's the
why you want to be a teachermoment. Because, remember, that
was the first thing in our book.
You gotta reconnect, right? Yougotta connect with your wife. So
I start with that every, everyyear I start with that. Because
once I start training them onall the things that are
necessary for these students, Iwant them to always remember,
man, this is hard, but this iswhy I became a teacher, because
(49:30):
I want to make a difference inthose students lives. You know,
every profession in this wholewide world is there because of a
teacher. A teacher trained thosechildren right all along the
way, and so I have them connectto their why. And, you know, we
have some I've had some studentscome to me after we had that big
(49:51):
discussion, and they decide, youknow, maybe I don't need to be
into teaching because I justwanted to be a teacher because I
thought I'd get summers off the.
And I'm like, I'm 68
Erin Brinker (50:03):
that's the wrong reason to go into that
profession.
Dr. Donita Grissom (50:07):
You think you get off at 230 or three,
don't? You? Don't? I used to goto school. I taught high school.
I had to leave my house beforestartup, and I didn't get home
till after the sun was down. Soit was like living in Alaska, I
don't know.
Erin Brinker (50:26):
So, and that's an important lesson. You know, if
you if that deciding where youwill thrive and what you need
and what your real reason is,you have to do that. You have to
know and figure out what yourneeds are, and it's okay if
those needs change. So you areteacher for 10 years, or you
work in the legal profession for10 years, and you decide, you
know this isn't for me anymore.
I'm going to do something else.
That's okay too. That's
Dr. Donita Grissom (50:47):
okay too.
But the and you know what, onlyyou can know that you know if
you wake up in the morning andyou know, I still miss my kids
and I used to teach, but I Iknow I saw the need out there. I
tell everyone I should havebought stock in Kleenex, because
I dried so many tears. You know,they came to me because they
didn't understand what washappening in all their other
(51:09):
classes. So that's what was mydriving force, to go back to
school, get my PhD and become ateacher trainer. And so that's
why I did that, but it wasalways with those babies. I call
them my babies. They wereteenagers. Teenagers are just
babies in bigger bodies, indeed,
Erin Brinker (51:29):
actually. So one of our programs here at the
making hope happen foundation isand kits, Carnegie and toddler
success. And I've talked withthe faculty at our partnering
University, and they they referto some of our kids as three
majors, because the the brainsof a three year old and the
brains of a teenager, there's alot in common in how they react
(51:50):
to things, how they internalizethings, how they think. So, yes,
a three major.
Dr. Donita Grissom (51:56):
I haven't ever heard of that. That's a
good one. I love it. So back,back to the university students,
really quick. What I love aboutthem is they do come with fresh
ideas, and especially, let'sjust for just two seconds, we'll
talk about AI. So with AI, forexample, teachers are scared of
that right now, and AI is notgoing to replace us. I mean, it
(52:19):
may replace certain aspects ofour job, this can't replace us.
Okay? The AI does not have theheart of a teacher. No, not even
close, not even close. And so Itell them, we've got to get with
the program, and we need tolearn from our three majors and
our college students in classabout how to use this to make
(52:40):
education better. That's all sothat. That's a little state, you
know, a little advertisement forthat, and that's what I'm trying
to do at my university. Iremember when, when power points
and and Google and all of thatwas starting to be new, and I
always took the idea I'm goingto learn so from them, and so I
would assign my high schoolstudents to do PowerPoints. And
guess what? That's how I learnedto do problems. I
Erin Brinker (53:02):
see, there you go.
You learn by by teaching.
Dr. Donita Grissom (53:06):
You know, we we have a lot to learn. I will
say that there are a lot ofpeople in the university that
are choosing not to go intoteaching because of the
landscape of education. Now I'mhoping that we can make that
better with the work that we doin the schools and in our
(53:27):
districts and in schools andwith teachers around the world
as well. And that's my goal, andthat's what I wake up every
morning to do. And let me justsay this. You know, we started
at the beginning talking aboutthe book and how the book is.
This book is for teaching. Wework with people, people in the
(53:48):
workplace, people that areparents, people, people. And so
these practices are applicableto people. It's just this
particular book is The storiesare related to teachers, because
they're the ones that are goingto affect our T our students,
excuse me, in our classrooms.
And so that's our audience, andthat's our experience, but we
(54:11):
can help train other people howto maneuver with these spa
proven practices, which includeshope and all the elements of
hope. And so I just kind ofwanted to put that out there,
that if you picked up the bookand you were not a teacher, you
could read the book that wouldhelp you, and then you could
(54:32):
give it to a teacher who needsit, indeed. Well, I'm going
Erin Brinker (54:35):
to be buying it and giving it to my husband, who
is a teacher. Thank you. So sothe Danita Grissom, this has
been, we're about out of time.
This has been so incredible. Thebook is high five to thrive,
Five proven practices to unleashyour passion for teaching. How
do people find and follow you onsocial media? How do they engage
you as a professional educationor certified life coach, etc?
(54:57):
Yeah.
Dr. Donita Grissom (55:00):
Okay, so our book is on Amazon. It's also on
Barnes and Noble, and I believethat you will have the QR codes
for that. We do have an ebook.
The eBook is not available onAmazon, just the paperback copy,
but it's available with atBarnes and Noble. And our
information, you can get intouch with best Questers at info
(55:21):
dot best excuse meinfo@bestqueesters.net and we
have a telephone number there,but if you just want to contact
me, which is perfectly fine, youcan contact me at Doctor D
grissom@gmail.com or you cancall me, 407-417-2765, I would
love to speak withsuperintendents, principals,
(55:49):
teachers, PTA members, boardmembers. Anyone interested in
having workshops? Our our newestworkshop. We call it stay
thrive, and it's a 70 theme.
They have 70s themes based andDebbie Simoes, Vicky Keltner and
myself. That's the three of uswho wrote this book. We do
(56:12):
dynamic. We call em retreatsbecause teachers need to have
fun too. Indeed, they walk theywalk away empowered. And we have
follow up activities and things,because I it's not a one stop
all, and so we want to talk topeople out there, so you can
(56:32):
contact us at that address.
We're on Facebook, we are onLinkedIn, we are on Instagram as
best Questers. You can get usthere. And yes, we want to get
out there and spread hopewherever we go.
Erin Brinker (56:50):
Well, Dr, Danita Grissom, this has been
delightful. Is this interviewhas been fantastic. I hope that
you join us again. Thank you forso much for joining me today,
Dr. Donita Grissom (56:59):
and thank you for this incredible
opportunity and how you makehope happen.
Erin Brinker (57:04):
But that is about all we have time for today. I'm
Erin Brinker. You've beenlistening to the making hope
happen radio show. For moreinformation about the making
hope happen Foundation, go towww.makinghope.org That's
www.makinghope.org Have a greatweek, everybody, and I'll talk
to you next week.
Noraly Sainz (57:30):
Hi, my name is Noraly Sainz, and I am Program
Coordinator at uplift SanBernardino, a collective impact
initiative at the making hopehappen Foundation. And this is
my story in November of 2017 myhusband our four young sons and
I moved away from our familiesto San Bernardino with the hope
of reaching our goal of homeownership. In 2018 as our oldest
(57:53):
son started kindergarten, Iconnected with the school
district and learned aboutmaking hope happens. Kids
program with my oldest inkindergarten and my twins at
preschool, I had the opportunityto tote my youngest to the kids
parenting classes. In January of2020, my husband and our
family's breadwinnerunexpectedly passed away. I
found myself in a pandemic withmy sons and an uncertain future.
(58:16):
It was then that that oasis thatI found at kids turned into my
support system as the staff andfriends rallied around me while
my sons and I struggled to findour new normal. In October of
2020, after seven years as ahomemaker, I joined the making
hope happen foundation as aprogram coordinator for uplift
San Bernardino. This careeropportunity reignited my
(58:38):
family's dream of home ownershipin November of 2022 through the
mutual support of the uplift SanBernardino Housing Network, my
family was able to buy our firsthome in my role as program
coordinator, and as I connectwith other families in our
community, I can wholeheartedlyattest to the opportunities that
the foundation is bringing toour community and truly making
(59:00):
hope happen. For
Erin Brinker (59:01):
more information about the making hope happen
foundation and to make adonation, please visit
www.makinghope.org That'swww.makinghope.org your
donations make our workpossible. You.
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